Saturday, March 17, 2012

Randi Lee recently tagged me in the Lucky 7 Meme that's been making rounds through the blogosphere. I'd been hoping to get tagged in one, so Randi, thanks! :)

The idea is to...

Turn to page 77 of your WIP.

Go down to line 7.

Copy down the next 7 lines--sentences or paragraphs--and post them as they're written. Don't cheat!

Tag 7 authors and let them know.

I couldn't decide which one to put up, so I decided to technically cheat and post 2. They're both first drafts, but hopefully they're readable.

From THE PAINTED QUEEN:

Cayden drew his claymore, the whisper of the tang muted as it slid from the scabbard. He slipped silently from Artan and crouched next to the nearest clump of brush. Jocelyn's shriek made him want to break cover and rush back to the narrow point in the path where she disappeared, but there was no telling how many or where their attackers were. He scanned the area and tried to calm his pounding heart. The canopy blocked most of the weak moonlight, leaving the forest below dark and forbidding. Stray beams of pale light wafted in as clouds above moved and lent a mystical quality to the undergrowth. Mayhap Tam Lin did dwell in these treetops.

The sounds of night resumed before he spotted his quarry. It took a moment to make the figure out, but it was there, crouched by a nearby tree, almost invisible. Had the light not trickled in through the trees he might have missed the brief glint from the claymore. A careless mistake on part of the stranger.

He whispered the words to an ancient prayer and moved silently as the breeze, trading his claymore for a smaller dirk. The man was pressed against the tree, only half turned away, but Cayden moved like a wraith across the distance.
“I think you’ve chosen poorly,” he whispered as he reached around the stranger’s neck with one hand, his dirk in the other. The stranger gripped Cayden’s arm with his left hand and rustled around with his right, no doubt reaching for a close-range weapon. “And I think your decisions are getting worse,” Cayden added as he applied a little pressure behind the dirk. There was enough light now to see the drop of blood fall from beneath the point.
“If we were to rate decisions, friend, you’d be the one in a bad way. My brother wouldn’t let you—a McLeod—kill me.”
Cayden laughed and turned the man loose. “Jamey McAllister, you groveling worm. A McLeod could kill you in his sleep.”
Jamey threw back his head and shouted, “Robert, the old one’s caught onto us,” before the forest erupted with howling men.

From HELL TO PAY:

A few miles on the other side of town, it had started. The cheery and unerringly loud melody blared from somewhere in his bag, hardly muted by the insulating clothes. He swerved into the other lane, struggling to correct and dig through the bag at the same time. It had taken a moment of staring to realize what the small black square was. Joann had insisted he take Ben’s cell phone, in case they needed to reach him. He doesn’t ever use it, she’d said with a stern look at her husband.

I don’t know how to use it, he’d thought in reply, but offered up a thank-you and reached out his hand anyway. If he hadn’t seen a similar one being used in the diner one day, he’d of never thought that it slid open, much less how to answer it. And even that had been an accident. He’d half thrown, half dropped it to the dusty floorboard when it buzzed in his hand like a diamondback rattler. When he’d picked it up and wiped it off, he heard her voice.

So he sat on the side of the road, phone pressed to his ear with one hand, the other rested on the steering wheel.

“Yes ma’am,” he said finally.

“Oh, good. Would you mind picking up a few things at the store? I forgot I’m hosting the study club supper tonight and I’m in desperate need of some staples we’ve been running low on.”

He bounced his fist on the top of the knobby steering wheel and breathed out a quiet sigh. The war inside him that he’d been ignoring the whole drive ramped up to deafening proportions.

Throw it out the window and drive.

To keep this thing going, I'm tagging these people. Even if they don't participate, they've got some pretty cool blogs you should check out.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Have query woes? Want to know what's not quite clicking on all cylinders? Need to get an objective, non-judgemental opinion before you send that thing out into the world?*

If you're like most writers, the answer is probably yes, hell yes, and friggin' hell yes. (Followed closely by 'right now yes'.)

Well, you're in luck.

In the blogosphere there exists a Goblin who'd love to look over your query. She lives here. What she does is simple: she eyeballs queries (for fun!) and lets you know what she thinks about them. She reworks them, smoothing out awkward phrasings or just to show you where the problems are. Or that what you're trying to say isn't what's being communicated. Basically, if goblins could be rockstars, she'd be one.

How do I know all this? Basically, she's helped me with two queries**. Not only do I think both queries are substantially better for it, but the process has helped me identify problems I commonly have and can therefore avoid in future queries. It's a win all the way around.